France: Benoît Hamon calls President Macron a “specialist in counterfeits”, when referring to basic income

Benoît Hamon, a former representative of the Socialist Party in France, and who ran for the French presidency in 2017 on ideas like legalizing cannabis, euthanasia, protecting “common goods” (water, air, biodiversity) in the Constitution and basic income. He lost that first run at the presidency, but is still politically active through the recently formed party named Génération.s.

In a recent short video (posted on Facebook) he criticizes elected President Emmanuel Macron, calling him cynical for not being coherent and truthful on the basic income topic. President Macron had shown openness to basic income in the past, but now, according to Hamon, has failed to follow up on his former interest by not abandoning the Revenue de Solidarité Active (RSA), a means-tested, behaviour dependent benefits program now existent in France. Hamon supports that this cynicism derives from the fact that Macron is using the basic income concept to talk about “the fight against poverty” in France, while keeping up the RSA program on the background. He adds that “it is not honest” to put this level of conditions and obligations on 9 million poor people in the country, while asking for nothing to millionaires.

Hamon also suggests that this attitude is used towards environmental policy as well, in which Macron will talk about ambitious environmental goals, but then leave in place policies which are “on radical opposition” to those goals. Concluding, Hamon call Emmanuel Macron a “specialist in counterfeits”, both on the social and environmental agendas.

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